


What do P-Ratings Mean? (Condensed)

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves (condensed) [8]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Autobiographical Elements, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Essays, Fix-It, Gen, Mentions of Alfred Bester, Mentions of Carolyn Sanderson, Mentions of Fatima Cristoban, Mentions of Jason Ironheart, Mentions of John Matheson, Mentions of John Sheridan, Mentions of Kevin Vacit, Mentions of Lyta Alexander, Mentions of Sandoval Bey, Mentions of Sophie Ivanova, Mentions of Susan Ivanova, Mentions of Talia Winters, Psi Corps, Worldbuilding, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23608996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: Everyone knows that Psi Cops are P12s, but what do the other ratings mean? What's a "latent telepath"? What's the cut-off for the Corps? Why are there even telepathy ratings, anyway?In this collection, I compile and clean up my earlier essays on the meaning of P-ratings. I also add some new content/chapters that have not appeared before.Behind the Glovesis an evolving, long-term project.(The earlier versions of these essays can be foundhere.)Telepathy is complicated. And in the B5-verse, it's also extremelypolitical.
Series: Behind the Gloves (condensed) [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687384
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. Overview (Latent Through P5)

Everyone's aware of Psi Cops, all of whom are P12s, though not all P12s are Psi Cops. For example, Alfred Bester, Psi Cop, is a P12. Most people are also aware of commercial telepaths, who are on the weaker end of the spectrum. For example, Talia Winters and Lyta Alexander are P5s (at least, Lyta was until the Vorlon incident). But what do these numbers really _mean?_

P-ratings are a measurement of "telepathic strength," though it's a little more complicated than that. (It always is, right?)

  * P-ratings range from 1-12, with super rare exceptions, for example Kevin Vacit (P13), and Lyta Alexander after the Vorlon incident (P20? P-who-the-heck-knows?). Kevin Vacit was Bester's grandfather, for those who are unfamiliar with the canon backstory.


  * Latent telepaths (for example Susan Ivanova) are not rated - they are legally normals. There is no "P0."


  * The cut-off for Psi Corps is P3. [Lyta's mother](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10804515), for example, though born to one of the Psi Corps "old families," was only a P2, and so was never formally attached to the Corps.


  * Earth Alliance law requires everyone above P1 to be legally registered for life, whether in the Corps or not. (This includes low-rated telepaths and telepaths on sleepers.) The Corps, however, sets its own cut-off at P3 - they do not have infinite resources, and they consider it not worth using those resources to raise and provide for telepaths (whether normal-born or Corps-born) who are too low-rated to perform "telepath jobs" in the Earth Alliance economy.


  * P-ratings rarely change. On occasion, however, young people will develop telepathy in stages, for example developing to P2 level and then later developing to P4 level. Low level telepaths from telepath families (such as Lyta's mom) are therefore monitored by the Corps for a period of time, in case they develop again. Low-level telepaths from normal families may be monitored as well, depending on local Corps' resources. (They're supposed to be monitored, but access isn't equal everywhere.)


  * Only one in ten thousand people in the general population is strong enough to get a rating, including P1s and P2s. Telepaths comprise only .1% of the population (as mentioned in _Mind War_ ), meaning there are about ten million telepaths in the entire Earth Alliance of ten billion people.


  * Earth Alliance law mandates that all normal children be tested for telepathy. Since only 5% of telepaths (from telepath or normal parents) manifest before puberty, few schools perform them yearly until puberty. A typical test for young children consists of a quick screening performed by someone from the Corps, similar to how on one day, the whole school gets checked for head lice. Since telepaths are so rare to begin with, the number who manifest from normal homes at such a young age is quite small - but Earth Alliance law mandates this testing for _all children_.


  * P-ratings are not linear - the difference between a P11 and P12 in strength is much larger than between a P1 and a P2, and _qualitatively_ , the experiences between ratings differ as well (see below). On occasion, people fall between ratings (having some traits of the higher rating and some of the lower), and are rated in between. Bester's lover Carolyn Sanderson was rated P11/P12.


  * P-ratings are far from the whole story on telepathic ability. One's training, one's skill, and one's life experience is in many instances at least as important, if not more so, than one's P-rating in determining what one is capable of doing.


  * This isn't a simple game of "higher numbers beat lower numbers." If telepathy were like gravity, by the analogy given in canon, P-rating would be like one's "mass," and the dent in "telepathic space time" one makes. That has little to do with skill, intelligence, instinct, combat ability, common sense, and so on. Even in cases of actual psi combat it's not that simple, because there's a thousand ways a more skillful person can outwit a less skillful person. (Stephen Walters, aka The Black Fox, was the head of the Underground for a generation, and he was only a P8. He was widely, and inaccurately, believed in the Corps to have been a rogue Psi Cop, but he was actually a P8. Also, after the Telepath War, when most older and experienced Psi Cops were in prison or dead, and the government sent fresh-out-of-school P12 _kids_ after Bester, this ended really badly for all of those kids.)



Now, with that aside, what do these ratings really _mean?_

  * Latent telepaths: Latent telepaths are legally normals. As Ivanova explains, she is able to feel and (weakly) block a casual scan. She could feel when her mom made contact with her, and in the context of that relationship, could feel her mom's feelings, at least when her mom chose to share them. Outside of the context of that relationship, however (or in theory with another telepath, since we're talking in general terms about latents), Ivanova doesn't experience others' thoughts or feelings. In summary, **latents are normals who can feel telepaths.**


  * P1s and P2s: These folks are in the zone between "normals" and "telepaths." Legally they are telepaths under Earth Alliance law (as written by normals), but they aren't strong enough be in the Corps (under Corps regulations, written by telepaths). In the early days of the MRA, they were legally treated the same as all other telepaths, but this proved to be an inefficient use of resources as these people weren't telepathic enough to do "telepath jobs" in the new system. (The Corps brings them in during the Telepath War, however.)



Telepaths in the Corps sometimes refer to P1s and P2s as telepaths, but yet would likely say, "they're not _full_ telepaths." Lyta, very proud to be a sixth generation telepath from an "old family" that dates back to the forming of the MRA (six generations), counts her mother in this lineage... but then we see that of all her matriarchal ancestors, her other, alone, is not even _named_ in canon. Her mother counts as a telepath when counting her as such helps Lyta's status in the Corps, but she disappears in every other context.

P1s and P2s can sense others' minds to some degree, but not _consistently_ or _specifically_ enough for membership in the Corps. They may absorb the emotions of others around them, but be unable to distinguish what is "theirs" from what is "someone else's." And while they may have general _impressions_ from others, or pick up on strong emotions, they are unlikely to feel _specific information_ in others' surface thoughts. (YMMV - someone may know what his or her partner of twenty years is thinking, but that's not the same as feeling the surface thoughts of a person one literally just met.) P1s and P2s can't communicate telepathically, though they may be able to understand if someone 'casts _to them_. In summary: It is **consistency and specificity** that distinguishes the P1s and P2s (not full telepaths) from the P3s and P4s (telepaths who are strong enough to be in the Corps, although whether a stronger telepath would call _them_ "full telepaths," either, depends on the sort of person you're dealing with!).

  * P3s and P4s are **surface thought telepaths.** In addition to picking up general impressions and strong emotions, they are also aware of specific information (associations, visual, musical, what someone's reading, etc.) in the surface thoughts of others. They have no confusion about what is "theirs" vs. "someone else's." Awareness of others' thoughts often occurs unconsciously; with training, they have some control over what they let in. They can sense both other telepaths and normals, and both people familiar to them and people they've just met. They may at times feel others' physical sensations. They can engage in limited telepathic communication (both ways), can feel if someone is making contact, etc. They may also have some ability to affect the minds/emotions of others around them - P3s, in some limited ways/contexts, and P4s, more broadly.



**They cannot reach into someone's mind and "extract" contextually unrelated information** , otherwise known as "deep scanning" (more on this later). P4s may be able to do what's referred to as a "mid-range scan," while P3s are unlikely to be able to do this at all, and are likely to be more limited to "surface" thoughts and associations. While (like any telepath) people in this range can strategically ask questions and watch another's thoughts and feelings, and then tailor follow-up questions as a result (or even trick someone into revealing information), they can't "deep scan" anyone (and with P4s, if they can, the ability is rare and inconsistent).

When P3s and P4s do experience higher-level telepathic experiences (e.g. to actively connect mentally on a deeper level, or unconsciously to absorb another's memories), it will usually be limited to specific, intimate contexts (familial, sexual, or otherwise).

P5s are distinguished from P4s mostly by their ability to actively, deep scan others for information. Talia Winters, for instance, worked as a court telepath and conducted "before and after" scans of prisoners before "death of personality" - this would be impossible for weaker telepaths, even with training. P5s (and above) can **actively scan** people and retrieve very specific information not just from their surface thoughts, but from their memories as well. They have considerable control over what they "let in" and what they filter out. They may be able telepathically to knock a normal unconscious and cause a migraine, though not with any permanent damage (unless the normal injures him/herself by falling!).

Not even the biggest snob would say that a P5 wasn't a "full telepath."

P5s, like weaker telepaths, also generally require line of sight (and generally proximity) in order to sense things from others. They usually work commercially, in the courts or for the Corps. They don't work in the jobs that require higher level telepathic ability (search and rescue, special ops, as Psi Cops, etc.), though they may work in Metapol as profilers or other assistants to Psi Cops.


	2. On Latent Telepaths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Susan Ivanova may know about her own experience as a latent telepath, but she's actually quite ignorant about telepathy in general, and about Psi Corps regulations.

A reader asked me why, if Susan Ivanova was a latent telepath who couldn't do very much, the following conversation happened in _Ship of Tears_ (when the command staff believe - erroneously - that Bester's come to the station to scan them):

Sheridan: "I need to speak to Ivanova alone for a moment. Susan, Bester still doesn't know you're a latent telepath."

Ivanova: "No, he doesn't, but... You're not gonna do this to me, are you?"

Sheridan: "If he's going to risk scanning someone, he'll grab the first person that walks in the door, in case he doesn't get another chance."

Ivanova: "I can't block a Psi Cop."

Sheridan: "No, but you told me that you can sense instantly if someone is scanning you."

There are many problems here.

  * First, Bester does, in fact, know that Susan Ivanova is a latent telepath. From the **same episode** : "You know, when I first came to Babylon 5, I studied your record. Terrible pity about your mother. But she took her own life. It wasn't the Corps that did it."



As I explained in ["What Happened to Ivanova's Mom?"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23459593/chapters/56237338):

The "record" he refers to is a Psi Corps file. The Corps opened a file on her and her brother when Susan was six.

When Sophie was registered, the Corps made files for her two children as well, in case those children should turn out to be telepaths. Neither child was strong enough to get a rating, however, so the files are pretty empty - but Bester was able to find out about her mom by locating her name in their database, and seeing she was Sophie Ivanova's daughter.

It's just ordinary due diligence for Bester to search the Corps records to see if there is anything there about the command staff. You need to know who could be an ally or an enemy.

Susan was never "hiding from the Corps." They knew where the family lived (someone from the Corps came out every week to give Sophie her injections, remember). They knew Sophie had two children. They just didn't care about her or Ganya, because neither was even strong enough to get a rating, let alone join the Corps. All along, they had a (mostly empty) file on her and Ganya, and all along, there was no consequence to either child's military career.

**What you are seeing here, as elsewhere, is Susan Ivanova's ignorance + paranoia.**

  * Second, "he'll grab the first person who walks in the door"? _Seriously?_



He's not out to get them - he's out to stop a dangerous drug dealer. If he was going to actively scan someone, he would scan the person he thought would know what he was looking for - not "whoever walks in the door first". And this is his third trip to the station - if he was going to start actively scanning the command staff for information, he would have done it already. _**And he hasn't!**_

**What you are seeing here, as elsewhere, is Sheridan and Ivanova's ignorance + paranoia.**

  * Third, Sheridan is **seriously** overestimating Ivanova's abilities.



She stated earlier, in _Divided Loyalties_ :

"I'm probably not even a P1. I've never been able to read anyone except my mother. I can pick up on feelings sometimes. I can block a casual scan and I know instantly if someone's doing it. But nothing more."

Sheridan doesn't realize her limitations. Sensing a "casual scan" from a weak/untrained telepath is **not the same thing** as sensing a "casual scan" from a Psi Cop who doesn't want to be noticed.

What Ivanova she knows is that she can feel when a weak/untrained telepath - such as her mom - is paying attention to her thoughts, and can "block" it by... I guess thinking about something else? "Casual scans," as I will discuss later on, mean nothing more than _paying attention_ \- it's just a matter of _intentionality of attention_ , not the same thing as active scanning. In fact, for strong telepaths, surface thoughts usually come through _even when you're not paying attention_ , as Byron complains about in _The Paragon of Animals:_

"Do you know what a telepath has to do in order to avoid picking up stray thoughts? We have to kick down our natural abilities. Run rhymes and little songs through our heads, round and round. All that to keep from picking up what you're broadcasting loud enough to be heard halfway down the hall."

It's Kurt Vonnegut's [Harrison Bergeron](http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html) every single day for strong telepaths, but Susan Ivanova really thinks she can "block" them from picking up on all this ambient noise from her? She can't, and she probably knows she can't, even if Sheridan wishes she could.

Yes, strong/trained telepaths can keep others from seeing their surface thoughts (without active digging), but Susan Ivanova isn't even a P1. Sheridan wants to believe she can - he is equally ignorant, and this could be Useful.

If Ivanova really thinks she could do this, it's because she was able to feel when her mother (a weak telepath) made contact, and she likely felt similar sensations with other weak telepaths.

But Psi Cops (especially highly-trained and experienced Psi Cops like Bester) are a different ball of wax.

(Not that this matters for the episode's plot, because he's not actually showing up to scan them - and they force him on sleepers as soon as he docks, anyway - but I do need to make it clear that experienced Psi Cops can casually scan weaker telepaths without them feeling it.)

Some examples from canon:

Final Reckoning, p. 82:

"And fencing normals was satisfying. Years as a Psi Cop had taught him to read body and facial language without scanning, but if he really needed to, he could pick up their strategies [in other words, lightly scan them] without them noticing. He didn't feel bad about it - men with long arms didn't feel bad about having more reach, after all. But he was careful. Though he hadn't met any other telepaths who used the salle, you never knew when one might come in. Another P12 might just notice him using his abilities, even at a very low level."

**He's concerned about another P12 noticing - not a weaker telepath, let alone a latent.**

(What I don't understand, though, is that another P12 would be able to see he was also a strong telepath, even if he "did" nothing at all. But anyway.)

Shortly after, on p. 83:

"A train arrived, but it wasn't his. He stood there, frowning, some of his good mood dissipated.

"And he caught someone watching him, felt a telepathic touch.

"He jerked his head around, and a face jumped out of the crowd. An older face, pale, snub-nosed, weak-chinned. He recognized it in an instant - he had always had a good memory for faces.

"A telepath. What was his name? Askern? Ackeron? Ackerman. He had worked at one of the reeducation camps...

"The fellow looked away. Bester managed a light scan, one he knew would be undetectable to a telepath of Ackerman's feeble abilities. Bester looked familiar to Ackerman, but the fellow hadn't placed him. The beard made a big difference."

Ackerman, a weak telepath, but nonetheless strong enough to be in the Corps, didn't feel it. Yes, Bester could lightly scan him without him knowing.

**So yes - if Bester had wanted to lightly scan Ivanova, he could have done so without her knowing.**

Meanwhile when Ackerman paid attention in this way to Bester ("telepathic touch," "light scan," all the same thing), Bester felt it. I assume Ackerman isn't a strong enough telepath to be able to pay attention in this way - especially to a P12 - without it pinging on his radar. Or he might be able to, but he was sloppy (he didn't recognize Bester).


	3. Overview (P5 Through P11)

To recap, from the last chapter:

  * Latents are normals who can feel telepaths.


  * P1s and P2s are not full telepaths. Telepathic impressions are non-specific and inconsistent. They are are legally telepaths, but not in the Corps.


  * P3s and P4s are full telepaths (above the Corps cut-off, anyway), but low end. Also known as "surface thought telepaths" because their ability to actively "scan" people for information is limited or non-existent (P4s may have some limited ability to "scan," while P3s do not).


  * P5: full telepath, can actively "scan" with consistency and specificity.


  * P5 through P9: Most telepaths in the Corps are in this wide band. Telepaths in this range exhibit more of a difference in telepathic strength than qualitative differences in telepathic ability itself. Telepaths in this range can serve in any job in the Corps other than those that require the specialized skills or abilities of the highest rated P-ratings. Telepaths in this range may work for normals or in the Corps itself: they may work in the Business Division, for the courts, or in any number of professional or administrative positions in the Corps. In this wide band, one's career path is usually determined by factors other than P-rating, including but not limited to skills, interest, and connections in the Corps.



While P5s are not able to project telepathic illusions (either to normals or to other telepaths), telepaths in the upper part of this band may have a limited ability to do so, at least for short periods of time (e.g. seconds or minutes). It's harder to successfully 'cast a telepathic illusion to an alien mind than to a human one (even a few seconds would be quite a strain), but one might be able to hold such an illusion to a human for several minutes. (The strain of successfully 'casting a telepathic illusion might cause a headache, as we see happen to John Matheson, a P6, in _Crusade_ , when he tried to 'cast a telepathic illusion to an alien, even for a few seconds.) YMMV - some people can do it better than others. Though normals and weaker telepaths might be fooled by such an illusion, stronger telepaths would have no problem seeing through it, at least, after a moment.

  * P10s and P11s: Telepaths in this range are rare. Jobs open to telepaths in this range include working for the Corps itself, as well as "normal facing" jobs such as search and rescue, or (for those who make the cut) special forces (also known as "bloodhounds"). **It is rare for telepaths in this range to work in the commercial or court sector** \- it's seen as somewhat "beneath" telepaths of this range to work for normals (this probably includes P9s also), so they usually find themselves working for the Corps in some way or another.



Jason Ironheart was a P10, and he was an instructor in the Corps. **It is not true that all instructors are high-rated** \- most of Bester's teachers when he was a child were not that strong. Cadre Prime instructors all come from Cadre Prime - in those days, high-rated graduates went onto top positions in administration, became Psi Corps, etc., and those chosen to be instructors were from the pool of lower-rated graduates (who applied - obviously, most went on to do other things).

It's rare (but not impossible) for instructors in the Business Division or Court Division to be very high-rated. There is a bit of canon error in _Mind War_ \- the text says, "His job is to work with telepaths level P5 through P10. Jamming, long-range scanning, that sort of thing." **There is no way a P5 like Talia could do that sort of thing, or would ever be in classes to learn it.**

Those are P10 and up specialized skills - Talia cannot sense people long distance. She can't work help in search and recover, as established in _And the Sky Full of Stars_ (she's a P5, requires proximity, isn't trained in search and recover), and she can't sense people long distance without line of sight (as established in _A Race Through Dark Places_ , where she drops her telepathic walls and gets nothing but static, but Bester can hear the people he's searching for). "Long range scanning"? Oh no. And by "jamming," they mean something specific to psi combat, and there is again no reason a P5 would ever be in such classes (or necessarily able to do this at all!). I'm not saying she couldn't have a P10 instructor - Ironheart still worked for the Corps, not directly for normals. I'm saying that Talia wouldn't be trained in psi combat or specialized, upper-level skills, and her instructors would instead be training her in the skills she would need in the Business Division (or the courts, or the Political Bureau, or any other job working directly for normals - all jobs she actually had). She's not a bloodhound or Psi Cop.

Also, it would be really strange for P5s and P10s to be in the same class, after age twelve. They would be placed in entirely different tracks. And it's not likely she would talk about the class in terms of P-ratings at all - she'd say "he was my instructor in the Business Division" or "he was my instructor when I was training to work in the courts" or "he was my instructor when I was studying to be a profiler in MetaPol" (one of Lyta's jobs, also as a P5). And higher rated telepaths would say something like, "he was my instructor in bloodhound training" or "he was my instructor in Psi Cop training," etc.

If she was explaining this to normals, she might specify what P-ratings students in a Business Division class are likely to have, but again... this is off.

(Maybe Jason Ironheart never made the cut for the bloodhounds, and ended up teaching basic psi combat and self-defense to lower rated telepaths - one of those optional classes students could take if they wanted. "This will help you if you find yourself in a fight with someone who's not too strong and not too skilled. It's better than nothing." Or, more cynically, to cover for the writing error, maybe she was in his class because she was already in a sexual relationship with him, so he let her take his advanced class.)


	4. Telepathy Is Actually Complicated

Under all of canon's talk of _ratings_ , the truth is that telepathy is actually complicated, and telepathic ability isn't comprised of just "one thing."

Yes, there is the aptitude that can be measured and rated (P whatever), but what actually happens is more complicated than that.

  * "How it works" is actually more complicated than "Proximity!" and "Line of Sight!"


  * "Intuition," in all its many forms, still exists, and anyone can have that, whether legally a "normal" or a "telepath."


  * And then, there's politics.



First, a few bits from canon to illustrate this, and then I'm going to tell you all what this means.

**********

Deadly Relations, p. 99-100. Bester (fourteen years old) and his mentor, Sandoval Bey, are in Amsterdam, looking for a student who has run away from school (Fatima Cristoban):

"She was here," Bey said, surveying the dingy little room. "Not long ago."

Al felt it, too, the vague imprint of Cristoban's psyche. It didn't belong here, in this narrow space, on that wretched tiny bed. It belonged - _out_ somewhere, with a wide sky. He thought back to her file, which he had reviewed on the helicopter ride. She was from Argentina. Was it a spacious place?

He shook the feeling off. Ever since he had "prepared" himself with the photograph, it was as if a ghost hung near his shoulders, entering his eyes now and then and rendering them alien. Was it possible that he was actually in touch with the Blip somehow? Sharing her actual thoughts? He asked Bey.

Bey was still walking slowly around the room, as if surveying each molecule in it. He didn't look at Al.

"I don't know," he replied simply. "Telepathy and distance are very strange things. Once, in the Belt, a construction worker went missing. We didn't find him for hours, and when we did it was first with radar and then with a telescope. He was in an EVA suit, twenty miles away, drifting. No response from his comlink, nothing. All of the shuttles were out, but we knew we could rig up a sled in pretty short order - if it was worth it. They asked me if I could tell whether he was alive or dead. He was a little dot in the sky, but once I established line of sight, I had him. I scanned him, and he was alive, though unconscious. Turns out it was attempted murder, but that's a longer story. Twenty miles and clear as a bell. I even got who the would-be killer was from him, then and there. We had him detained before the sled even rescued the castaway.

"On the other hand, I've been unable to pull surface thoughts from someone hiding in a closet ten feet away." He paused. "I know they teach line of sight, but I could tell you some stories-" He looked at Al, finally. "It comes down to this: We still don't know exactly how telepathy works. I sometimes wonder if its limitations aren't more psychosomatic or perceptual than anything else. Why else should I be able to scan someone twenty miles away, simply because I can see a tiny silver dot?"

"So it's possible I might have established some link with her?"

"I wouldn't count on it. It's more likely closure - your mind putting things together from a number of facts and sensations. Your memory of her signature, the traces of her left in this room, the details you know about her - the Human mind is a strange machine, even without telepathy. The main thing, Mr. Bester, is that it _works_. 'Why' is usually a fine question to ask, but in this case-" He stopped, smiling. "Have you ever seen the animated vids?"

"Yes. I used to like _Roadrunner_."

"Hmm - the roadrunner was the Blip, right? And the coyote, the Psi Cop?"

"Yes, sir. The roadrunner was clever, but he always got caught in the end."

"Did he ever run off of a cliff, and not know it? Just hang there in the air until he realized that he wasn't standing on anything?"

"Yes, sir. That's when he would fall."

"Sometimes our abilities are like that. Convince yourself that something shouldn't work, and sometimes it doesn't."

"In that case, sir, I'd like to tell you something I really shouldn't know."

"What's that, Mr. Bester?"

"She's out in a park, somewhere, or a field. Someplace open."

Bey nodded thoughtfully. "Well. An intuition. And you may be right - that may be where she _wants_ to be. That's very different from knowing where she is."

"Yes, sir."

[Yes, the Corps writes its own Loony Tunes cartoons!]

Bey turns out to be right - Fatima Cristoban is very much not in an open field. Either that's where she wanted to be, as Bey speculates, or that's just where Bester's unconscious mind put her (he had met her in person earlier, so he wasn't making all this up just from looking at a photograph). Either way, she's not there.

"Hunches" =/= telepathy.

Also interesting, however, is that Bester and Bey - both P12s - are able to feel that Fatima was recently in that room, but "how" isn't actually understood, by anyone, including them.

  * Are Psi Cops able to sense if someone's recently been in the room? _Sometimes._



In school, as Bey says, they teach about line of sight - because it's "predictable." It's easy to teach, to both normals and telepaths alike: If you've got line of sight on someone, even very far away, you can scan them! And proximity! That's easy to understand, even if it's not always "how it works."

He doesn't offer the rest of the context: Most normals know next to nothing about telepaths, even Psi Cops. They know business teeps "keep business honest" and they know Psi Cops "keep them safe from rogues," and as a general matter, that's all they _need_ to know. There's not much reason to get into anything beyond that - and trying to teach them more could even be dangerous. It's not _safe_ for telepaths, as a whole, for normals to know that Psi Cops actually can make mistakes, like anyone else can.

Still, actual telepaths know it's really not cut and dry, bright line, all or nothing, black and white. Nothing with the human mind ever is.

Perhaps Bey should have explained it thus (after describing being able to scan someone miles out in space, unconscious, and no more than a distant speck, once he had line of sight):

_“On the other hand, I've been unable to pull surface thoughts from someone hiding in a closet ten feet away." He paused. "I know they teach line of sight and proximity, but I could tell you some stories-" He looked at Al finally. "It comes down to this: We still don’t know exactly how telepathy works. I sometimes wonder if its limitations aren’t more psychosomatic or perceptual than anything else. Why else should I be able to scan someone twenty miles away, simply because I can see a tiny silver dot? Have you ever had a lucid dream, Mr. Bester?”_

_Al nodded._

_“Sometimes in dreams, we become aware that we’re dreaming. We should be able to do anything – fly, walk through walls, anything we like. But often we can’t, because our dream eyes deceive us. I told you about the Blip I couldn’t detect, only ten feet away. I couldn’t see or hear her. And I couldn’t feel her thoughts, either, because on a subconscious level, my mind couldn’t process that she was there.”_

Telepathy is, to a large degree, unconscious and automatic. For surface thought telepaths, "trying" to know what someone's thinking usually doesn't produce any results, but awareness of others' thoughts nonetheless happens anyway when they're _not trying_. Once you become aware of what's going on, and start _trying_ , it may stop working - and we're back to the Roadrunner analogy.

Plop.

(This is about thoughts, also, not about strong emotions - that's different.)

Line of sight helps a lot, but even with line of sight, "trying" might not get you anywhere, if your mind expects _not_ to see something.

Higher rated telepaths (those who can consciously scan others) can also run into issues with this, as Bey points out, not just lower-rated telepaths - for any telepath, if you don't have line of sight on someone, your mind can play tricks on you, and you can unconsciously expect something _not_ to work - which makes it not work. (And even with line of sight, your mind can _still_ play tricks on you - or what I've elsewhere described as the paradox of wearing eyeglasses vs. looking through a window.)

  * So, can Psi Cops sense rogues behind a wall, with no line of sight, and no ability to hear them? _Sometimes._



And sometimes they can't - bloodhounds spend years training to do precisely this skill, but even then, it's not "perfect."

You can see now why this isn't talked about outside the Corps. Telepathy is poorly understood, and _complicated_ , and normals generally have little time or patience for that. They need reassurances that Psi Cops can do their jobs and keep them safe, rain or shine, _no matter what_. That telepathy is complicated is _not_ the image the Corps wants to project - the safety of all telepaths depends on it.

Meanwhile, protecting telepaths from another round of deadly pogroms, _by mundanes_ , is of the highest importance in the Corps, and that safety depends on mundanes thinking everything is simple and believing that the Corps, no matter what, can keep them safe. This is a broader principal, of course, and applies to all Corps/normal public interactions, but it especially applies here. This adherence to a strict "party line" about telepathy is so crucial, it even extends to what's taught in Corps schools, to telepaths themselves.

  * It's a hard thing to admit, outside of safe ears: **"Sometimes Psi Cops** **make mistakes - not because they're incompetent, but because _telepathy is a human mental faculty, not a magical plot device."_**



That's not something anyone wants to be explaining to mundanes, especially with public safety on the line. Psi Cops are _never_ supposed to make these kinds of mistakes, _whatever the reason_. (Heck, even business telepaths are never supposed to make mistakes when monitoring negotiations! That's not "supposed to be possible"! Mundanes also generally don't care about how telepathy works, as long as it suits their needs. And that means it "always works, in the way they want it to work."

This is where politics comes in.

Maintaining this "party line" about "how telepathy works" (even though that's not the whole story) has become so crucial, it's even taught like this to children in the Corps. This is how Bester got to fifteen, and had never heard of this before. Just like we saw earlier how the Psi Corps Student Handbook was written by mundanes, the lessons for young telepaths about "how telepathy works" are _also_ written (or at least influenced) by mundanes.

It's screwy, but true.

Meanwhile, Bey wasn't raised in the Corps (he didn't enter the Corps till he was a teenager), so he has fewer political hangups about admitting the truth to his students. It's part of what makes him such an excellent teacher.

But Bester, raised in Cadre Prime - and telepathic since birth - _has not been taught the complete picture in school about how telepathy works_ , especially the bits that can't be neatly "explained." Corps schools self-censor like hell, sadly, even about something as basic as "how telepathy works," because what young telepaths are taught always has a _political implication_. Telepaths are being raised to directly or indirectly "serve normals," and the Corps is supposed to be a "clearinghouse" for them.[[1]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23608996/chapters/56795773#_ftn1) Telepaths have to be taught to think in certain ways, such as accepting that "the rules come from the Corps [and not from normals] and that the rules are good." Likewise, telepathy has to be presented as working in predictable ways, infallibly, because that's the line "for normal consumption."

(The Corps is, remember, an agency of EarthGov, run by a mundane director, and overseen by a committee of the EA Senate.)

It took an outsider by birth - Bey - to explain it to him.

Remember also that "ratings" are themselves a mundane invention, imposed on telepaths, a convenient shorthand for _mundanes_ to be able to categorize telepaths and sort them into the "best jobs" for them (to serve normals), with the Corps acting as a "clearinghouse."[](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12272781#_ftn1) Telepaths never "rated" each other _anywhere on Earth_ until Crawford and his cronies came up with that idea. It is entirely a mundane concept in its origin, and entirely unique - what other human skill or faculty is "rated" in such a fashion? NONE AT ALL.

And yet look how "easy" it is for both normals and telepaths to adapt to this framework and internalize it, how "obvious" it starts to seem that this system comes out of the natural order of the universe.

[[1]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23608996/chapters/56795773#_ftnref1) JMS’ own words, July 17, 1994 (as quoted on a card in the collectable card game): “About 125 years or so ago in B5’s timeline (2100-2110 and thereabouts), full-blown telepaths began to be discovered. About 2150 or so, the government agencies that regulated and oversaw telepaths were rolled over into the Psi Corps, which became a clearing house [sic] for locating, controlling, and licensing telepaths for commercial, some very restricted legal, and military purposes.”


	5. And Telepathy Is Political

There are other places in canon where telepathy is described in a complex, non-linear fashion. And telepathy is not the same thing as _intuition_ , either.

Kevin Vacit talks about "intuition" in Dark Genesis:

"We spend so much time here teaching you to deal with other telepaths, we forget the more ancient forms of mind reading. The late Senator Crawford - now there was a man who could read minds, though he had no trace of telepathic ability. Until my forced display in Yucatán, even the most powerful telepaths failed to detect me, nor did I really fear that they would. Crawford, I worried about." (Dark Genesis, p. 184)

Final Reckoning (the third book of the canon "Psi Corps Trilogy") also references these "ancient forms" of intuition - a catch-all term used in that world to refer to all intuition that doesn't fit the definition of "legal telepathy"):

"There was an old exercise for picturing how gravity worked. You imagine space as a sheet of rubber, extending in all directions. You put a ball bearing on the sheet, and it creates a small dimple. You place a cannonball on the sheet, and it makes a large one. Place the ball bearing near enough to the cannonball, and it rolls down the large dimple to join the cannonball. The lesson is that mass warps space, and that the 'attraction' of gravity is merely a by-product of that warping.

"Bester had long ago used that same visualization to think about telepathy, with the ball bearings and cannonballs and what-have-you representing minds. A normal made a tiny dimple, a P12 a deep one. But it was more complicated than that. The older a telepath got, the more experience he acquired, and the more he learned from his instincts, the stronger his telepathic gravity became and the more the plane of thought curved around him. The deeper his imprint became, so to speak.

"At the same time, he became more and more sensitive to other perturbations on the imaginary rubber sheet. Yes, real telepathy, the transfer of coherent ideas from one mind to another, depended upon proximity and, ideally, line of sight. But there were older senses that telepathy could engage, senses that worked below the level of rational thought." (Final Reckoning, p. 212)

And those "older senses," as he describes it, and experiences it, are comprised of many different intuitions.

  * _Certain_ telepaths have _certain_ enhanced faculties because the Vorlons were tinkering with human DNA (though only 70% of telepaths carry the gene, and many normals and latents carry the gene also). But this doesn't mean that everything else that's ever existed in human mental faculties has changed, let alone disappeared. All of that still exists - and it's independent of who is a "normal" or a "telepath." For telepaths, it's even synergistic.


  * This just not talked about very much - as such - because "telepathy" has moved from a descriptive umbrella category, to a _social, commercial, political and legal phenomenon_ (and a narrow, specific one at that), one that even defines a social caste. Accordingly, the ways people think about talk about telepathy have also changed over time.


  * Therefore, there is "telepathy" and there are "older senses." (Even if they're not really "older" in many cases!)



Are some normals _damn good_ at knowing who's lying? Sure. Several such people are described in canon (e.g. Senator Lee Crawford and Inspector Raphael Girard). They're 100% normals. There are normals who are better at detecting lies than telepaths are!

Not all telepaths are high-rated, not all telepaths have good (let alone excellent) social skills, and above all, telepaths are human beings who sometimes get distracted and miss things. (But don't tell anyone that, because the Earth Alliance economy depends on the fiction that telepaths are living "lie detector machines.") The truth is that successful commercial telepaths have to have good social skills, and have to develop the skills to notice lies and omissions - a skill set that overlaps with, but isn't _entirely comprised by_ \- telepathy.

  * Are some normals able to tell when their close friends and family are lying? Sure - that never changed at all.


  * Are some normals better than telepaths at detecting lies? Of course. It's not very common to be that good, but it happens.


  * Do both normals and telepaths have various forms of "intuition"? Sure - that's what Bester is talking about above.


  * And since this one happens to Ivanova: Do normals still sometimes have experiences such as we might (in this world) call "telepathy" - e.g. feeling when a loved one tragically and suddenly dies, far away? Sure. _That experience actually has nothing to do with her being a latent telepath - that can happen to anyone._


  * But isn't that "telepathy"?



That's a **_political_** question, not a philosophical question.

Remember, "telepath" status is a legal creation, reified in Earth Alliance law. It's actually about the money - at its heart, the reasons for defining "telepaths" the way the law does, and shoving said telepaths into a separate "caste," are about economic exploitation - keeping them out of most jobs (so as not to compete with normals), and forcing them to take only jobs that directly or indirectly benefit normals socially and economically. It's about control. (Pssst - that's the Earth Alliance Senate, not the Corps, we're talking about.)

The mundane politicians and policymakers knew nothing about Vorlon influence when they made these laws. It was all about normal control, normal power, and normal money. And it always is. These very same Earth Alliance laws that define telepaths and mandate "universal registration" of telepaths in enormous databases didn't change _at all_ after the Telepath War. Some surface changes took place, but nothing deep, nothing structural, and nothing lasting.

So what Ivanova experienced when her brother died... those kinds of "intuitive" experiences are impossible to "quantify," to predict, to commodify, to _commercialize_ \- so EA law says no.

"Not telepathy."

I told you telepathy is complicated.


End file.
